Читать книгу Wild Iris Ridge - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 11
ОглавлениеCHAPTER FOUR
“COME ON, HONEY. You can do it,” Brendan urged his daughter.
“No! Don’t let go, Daddy,” Faith begged. “Please don’t let go.”
Brendan sighed as he held on to the back of her bike seat, wishing he could enjoy the sweetly warm April evening that smelled of life, new growth, somebody barbecuing down the street.
Another spring, another effort to get Faith to ride her bike without the training wheels.
Two years ago, she had begged him to take off the training wheels on her bike as soon as the snow melted. He had promised he would before the new baby came—but before he could follow through on his promise, Jess and the baby were both gone.
None of them had felt much like riding bikes that spring. When he pulled them out of the garage after the snow melted a year ago, Faith had insisted she wasn’t ready to ride without the training wheels. He had pushed a little but not too hard. Jessie had only been gone a year and Faith seemed to need the comfort of the familiar.
But she would turn eight years old during the summer. The time had come for her to stop clinging so tightly to the familiar and venture into untried territory.
He worried about the tentativeness she had developed since Jess’s death. She never wanted to try anything new—roller-skating, Girl Scouts, sushi.
She was an insanely smart girl, but she was beginning to let her fears rule her.
All of them had been in grief counseling for months after Jess and their unborn baby died. Maybe they weren’t quite done in that department.
At some point, he had to fight back against the tyrannical hold Faith’s fears had over her. He figured forcing her to lose the training wheels was as good a place to start as any and had removed them a week earlier, much to her dismay.
“Hey, Dad! Look! Here I go!”
Carter, still a month away from six, rolled past on his two-wheeler like Lance freaking Armstrong—but without the steroid abuse.
Carter seemed on the other side of the spectrum from Faith, totally without fear. He had begged Brendan to take off his training wheels the previous fall and he had done it with a great deal of trepidation, certain a five-year-old didn’t have the balance or coordination yet. Training wheels existed for a reason, right?
At the same time, he had hoped maybe seeing Carter make the effort might spur Faith to try a little harder.
Instead, as she watched her brother master the bike in just an hour, Faith only seemed to cling tenaciously to her conviction that she wasn’t ready.
“You’re doing great, Car,” he called. “Keep going.”
“I loooove my bike,” Carter sang out at the top of his lungs in one of his spur-of-the-moment song compositions as he rode past. “I love love love my bike.”
He had to smile at the sheer exuberance Carter brought to everything he did. What would he have done the past two years without both of his kids?
Probably wandered into the wilderness and became a hermit or something, growing a four-foot-long beard and living off beef jerky.
“Riding bikes is awesome and cool. I want to ride my bike to school,” Carter sang.
Even Faith smiled at her little brother.
Brendan took that as an encouraging sign. “Okay, let’s try one more time.”
Her smile slid away. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me, Daddy.”
“You can do it, Faith. You just have to believe in yourself,” he urged, feeling like the worst parent on earth for pushing her out of her comfort zone. On the other hand, wouldn’t catering to her unreasonable fears be more harmful in the long run?
“I don’t want to!” she protested.
“One more, that’s all. I promise. And then we can put the bikes away and go for a walk.”
“I want to ride a bike,” she said, with traces of her mother’s stubbornness—okay, and his, as well—in her voice. “I just want to ride a bike that still has training wheels. Why can’t you put them back on?”
If the kid spent as much time trying to focus on her balance as she did arguing about why she couldn’t, they would all be better off.
“One more time, Faith. Come on, kiddo. You’ve got this.”
She glared at him but apparently accepted that he wasn’t about to back down. With him holding on to the seat for balance, she started her wobbly way down the ride.
“Don’t let go,” she said. “Promise!”
He didn’t answer. Instead, when she seemed to have sufficient speed and had reduced the wobble, he enacted one of those difficult parental betrayals and released his hold on her.
She rode about six feet before she realized he wasn’t holding on anymore...and promptly fell over.
“Owwww,” she wailed, not quite crying but close to it. “You let go! You promised you wouldn’t let go!”
“I never promised I wouldn’t let go.”
“Yes, you did! You did!”
She wouldn’t listen to him in this state, and he wasn’t going to stand here arguing with her. Close to the end of his patience, he was about to tell her so when an unwelcome voice intruded.
“Wow, Faith! You’re riding a two-wheeler? That’s wonderful!”
Both of them turned around swiftly to find Lucy walking down the sidewalk toward them.
She looked lovely and bright and more casually dressed than he had seen her in a long time, in jeans and a plain green tailored cotton shirt that matched her eyes. With her hair pulled up into a loose hairstyle on top of her head, she looked pretty and sweet and far too young to have been the marketing director at a major software company until recently.
He was supposed to make arrangements with her to drop off a few things for Faith and Carter. He hadn’t precisely forgotten; he had just done his best to put it out of his head so he didn’t have to dwell on more thoughts of her that seemed to have intruded far too frequently since she returned to town.
“Aunt Lucy!” Faith exclaimed, her voice overflowing with joy.
Her father’s minor treachery forgotten, she jumped up from the toppled bike and raced to Lucy, throwing her arms around her waist with an exuberant delight he rarely saw in his quiet, serious oldest child.
Lucy closed her eyes as she returned Faith’s embrace with a soft expression on her features that brought a weird lump to his throat.
He and Lucy might not get along for a dozen different reasons, but he couldn’t deny that she loved his children.
“What are you doing here?” Faith burst out. “I didn’t even know you were coming! How long are you staying? Where are you staying? Will you be here for my baseball game next week?”
Lucy laughed at the barrage of questions hurled at her like a broken pitching machine spewing balls at the new batting cages in town.
“Whoa. Slow down. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you myself. I made a really quick decision to come back to Hope’s Crossing, and here I am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anybody. And I can’t tell you how long I’m staying but I think it will be at least a month.”
Faith’s eyes widened. “A month? Really?” she whispered in a reverent sort of voice, as if someone had just handed her all her dreams on a shiny platter. Which Lucy apparently had just done.
“Yes. I’ll be staying at Iris House. Just up the hill, right? I hope we have a chance to spend a lot of time together while I’m here.”
“We can! Oh, we can,” Faith said, at the same moment Carter came zooming past again on his bike.
Unlike his sister, Carter didn’t seem at all fazed to see his usually absent honorary aunt. He acted like it was no big deal to encounter her walking down the street.
“Lucy! Hey, Lucy! Look at me!”
“Wow, Carter! You’re doing great. Both of you riding without training wheels. That’s so terrific. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll both be driving.”
Faith giggled and grinned at Brendan, apparently forgetting for the moment that she was mad at him.
“I’m not really very good at riding a two-wheeler,” Faith confessed after a moment.
“It takes a lot of practice. I bet you’re terrific. Why don’t you show me?”
Brendan worried she might start up her litany of excuses again. Instead, after a wary look at Lucy, she picked her bike off the pavement and climbed on with a determined expression.
He moved forward to hold on to the seat again, but before he could reach it, Faith pushed one pedal down and then the other. The effort was wobbly and unsteady and he thought for sure she would fall but after a few more feet, something clicked. She caught the rhythm or found her balance or something. By the time she made it to the next driveway, she was actually riding.
Faith gave a half excited, half terrified shriek.
“You’re doing it, sweetheart,” he called.
“That’s fantastic! You’re amazing,” Lucy said. “See if you can make it to the corner and back.”
“Come on, Faith. We can go together!” Carter exclaimed, obviously excited to see his sister riding after all the hassles of working to make it happen.
They rode off together, with Faith gaining more confidence with each rotation of the wheel.
“You’re welcome,” Lucy said, as the children pedaled out of earshot.
He gave her a long look. “Am I?”
“How long has she been trying not to learn how to ride a two-wheeler?”
He made a face. “About two years now. How did you know?”
She shrugged, keeping a careful eye on the children. He tried to do that, too, but found his gaze straying back to her despite his best efforts. “I’ve been watching from the house for the past fifteen minutes. Nobody but Carter seemed to be having a good time.”
“Faith can be obstinate when she’s in a mood.”
“Poor thing,” she said with a dry look. “She must have inherited that trait from Jessie.”
The name seemed to shiver between them. Her best friend and his late wife.
“No doubt,” he murmured and quickly changed the subject. “How’s the house? Still smell like a campfire in there?”
She shook her head. “I found a couple of box fans in the cellar. I threw open all the windows on the ground floor and for the last two days I’ve been trying to blow all the air out. Now it smells like a Colorado April afternoon.”
“That should help. You’ll want to wash the curtains in that room, like I said, maybe have the upholstery on the furniture cleaned. Sometimes that smoke can cling for weeks, especially in textiles.”
“I’ll do that. Thank you.”
They lapsed into silence, both watching the children as they reached the corner. Brendan held his breath as Faith navigated the turn. She was a little shaky and he thought she would fall, but she set her leg down to help stabilize the bike and then picked up the rhythm again.
The kid was a natural. He had known she would be once she conquered her mental block and pushed past her apprehension. For that, at least, he owed Lucy.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night about coming over to bring the gifts you bought for the children,” he said on impulse. “The evening got away from me, as they tend to do, with homework and laundry and dinner and everything.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her eyes filled with a sympathy he found as surprising as it was unwelcome. He didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. Yeah, being a single father was tough, but he had plenty of help from his family and good neighbors.
“Whenever you want to come over should be fine. Tomorrow after school would work. I’m not on the schedule at the station for a few more days.”
“Thanks. I would go get them now but I don’t want to stop the forward momentum here.”
The kids rode up to them just then. Faith even managed a credible job of staying balanced while she braked.
“Did you see that, Dad?” Faith’s sweetly serious little face glowed. “I rode all the way to the corner and back!”
“I watched the whole time. You were terrific. I knew you could do it. It was just a matter of practice.”
And a little bit of Lucy magic, he added to himself. It wasn’t a completely comfortable thought.
“Can we go for a bike ride to the park?”
He chuckled. “Two minutes ago, you couldn’t ride without your training wheels. Now you’re ready to go across town to the park?”
“It’s not across town. I meant the little park that’s just on the other side of Tulip Street.”
He had a hundred things to do that evening. Reports to file, bills to pay, dishes to wash. But he couldn’t discourage her from practicing this new skill he had fought so hard for her to attain.
“Sure. We can go to the park. Stay on the sidewalk and don’t cross the street until I get there.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
She beamed at him and rode off, still a little wobbly but really doing remarkably well, considering she had only actually been riding without the training wheels for about ten minutes.
He followed after her and had walked only a few steps when he realized Lucy was still standing where he had left her, in front of the Browns’ driveway.
He turned around, struck by how lovely she looked there in the long shadows of afternoon with the fading sunlight haloing her hair and burnishing her skin.
He didn’t want to notice that about Lucy or any woman. Not yet. He forced himself to push it out of his mind.
“You’re not coming with us?” he asked gruffly, gesturing after the kids.
She blinked a little at his tacit invitation then smiled. “Oh. Yes. I could use a walk this evening.”
He waited until she caught up with him, and they walked in silence for a few moments. The air was pleasantly cool. He always enjoyed this time of year, when the grass was beginning to green up again and the trees were bursting with buds.
“I had forgotten how pretty Hope’s Crossing is in the evening,” she said.
He had lived here most of his life, except the few years he was away on a scholarship playing college football and earning his degree and then the two short years he played pro football before a knee injury permanently sidelined him. To him, Hope’s Crossing was just...home. But on a spring night in April, he could see the appeal of the well-kept, charming houses, the tree-lined streets, the mountains that encircled the town.
He waved to old Mr. Henderson, driving past in his beat-up old Chevrolet pickup truck. “It’s a nice little town, especially for kids.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
They walked a little farther and he raised a hand in greeting to two more people driving past.
“You must know everybody in town,” she said.
“Not even close. We’ve got so many people moving in or building second homes in the area, it’s hard to keep track. I just happen to know those two. And that one, my neighbor, Mrs. Peabody.”
He waved at the longtime widow who used to teach him in Sunday school. He saw her shield her eyes with a hand as she tried to make out the identity of his companion and his stomach dropped.
He suddenly regretted asking Lucy to join him on this little excursion. Hope’s Crossing was a small town. People were bound to take notice when their favorite object of pity, that poor widower Brendan Caine, started walking around town with a woman new to Hope’s Crossing—or at least recently returned to town.
The last thing he needed were rumors starting up about him and Lucy. He didn’t want anybody deciding to put more into this than exactly what it was, a casual walk to the park with his kids.
In reality, they were two people who disliked each other, linked only by the woman they had both loved and by the two children who rode ahead of them.
He needed to keep reminding himself of that and not allow himself to be seduced by a lovely evening, an even lovelier woman and the quiet enjoyment of a little adult companionship, for a change.
* * *
A WEEK AGO, if somebody had told her she would be spending a beautiful April evening sitting at a park in Hope’s Crossing on a bench next to Brendan Caine, she would have laughed out loud at such a preposterous notion.
Life had the strangest way of throwing curveballs at a woman when she least expected it.
A week ago, she had been confident she had the world figured out—or at least her place in it. Now everything had changed, and she was left trying to find her way again.
Once again, she questioned her decision to return to Hope’s Crossing. It had seemed so right at the time, coming back to this place where she had always found peace and comfort with Annabelle.
But Annabelle was gone and nothing would be the same.
Maybe she should have stayed in Seattle. She had a condo there she had paid cash for a few years earlier. She could have lived there basically rent free while she sent out feelers for other jobs. With her contacts in the industry, it probably wouldn’t have taken her long to find something new. Being fired from her previous job didn’t exactly look that great on her résumé but maybe her track record before the disastrous software launch would speak for itself.
Instead of following logic and sense, she had gone with her gut, for once, and had come back to the only place that had ever felt close to home.
Now, sitting next to Brendan Caine, she wondered again if it had been a huge mistake. He didn’t want her here, that much was obvious—at the park or in Hope’s Crossing. She hadn’t missed his discomfort, just walking through town with her.
Too late to second-guess herself now. She was here now and just needed to make the best of things—and maybe that started with finding common ground with Brendan.
“I had a nice chat with your sister yesterday morning at the café,” she said.
“Did you?”
“She looked fantastic. And she told me she’s getting married to Spence Gregory. That must have been quite a shock for you and your brothers.”
He shrugged. “They seem happy together. Spence was always a good guy. He just lost his way for a while.”
Apparently, there was a lot of that going around.
“And I understand Dylan’s tying the knot, too, with Genevieve Beaumont,” she said. “Shock number two.”
“Yeah. That one’s a little harder to take in, but somehow they work together.”
“How is her family taking it?”
“You mean their little princess hooking up with a disfigured war veteran?” he asked, his voice cold.
“Your words. Not mine,” she answered in the same tone.
He studied her for a moment and some of the protective harshness seemed to ease in his handsome features. “Sorry. It’s a touchy subject. The mayor and Mrs. Beaumont weren’t very thrilled at first, especially since Dylan was unemployed for a while there. And of course, they didn’t hesitate to let their objections be known far and wide throughout the land.”
“I remember the Beaumonts. That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Gen stood up to them, which was a surprise. The way I hear it, she told them if they put her in a position to make her choose between her family or Dylan, she would choose him, every time.”
Lucy decided she was liking Genevieve Beaumont more and more. “How romantic.”
“Or something,” he murmured.
“You don’t think so?”
“It’s easy to make grand sweeping statements like that. Not so easy to live with the consequences of them.”
“But Genevieve must have stuck by her guns. They’re getting married, right?”
“Dylan had a long, tough talk with Gen’s parents. When he’s not being all gruff and cranky, he can be quite a charmer, apparently. I think he must get it from Pop.”
“Too bad that trait wasn’t handed down universally to all the Caine brothers.”
He snorted, a small, amused smile teasing the corner of his mouth. “Isn’t it, though?”
She felt inordinately pleased that she had brought a smile to his face, even such a tiny one.
“He’s also started a partnership with a fairly new contractor in town, Sam Delgado. From what I understand, they have more business than they know what to do with right now. And he’s still a regular volunteer at A Warrior’s Hope, the recreational therapy program Spence and Charlotte started for wounded veterans. A war hero, a volunteer, a thriving businessman. How could Laura and William possibly object to such a paragon for a son-in-law?”
“Not to mention he’s the man their daughter loves.”
“There is that.”
He started to say something else but Carter called out from the swings in an imperious tone.
“Daddy! Push me.”
Brendan sighed. “How did my children both get to be such bossy little things?”
She rose from the bench. “I’ve got this. Relax.”
“No. It’s fine.”
“I’d like to. Would it kill you to let me help with the kids for five seconds?”
So much for any amicable accords. He was back to glowering at her—but at least he sat back down on the bench and made a gesture for her to go ahead.
She moved behind Carter and gave him a hard, swift push that had him giggling in delight.
“Higher!” the little daredevil exclaimed. This one was going to give his father all kinds of trouble during his reckless teenage years, she expected.
“Sure thing. Except I’m going to blame you if my arms fall off.”
He giggled harder and swung his legs to help gain momentum.
“Faith says you’re staying for a month. Is that true?”
“That’s the plan, kiddo.”
“Yay! Then you can come to my birthday party. It’s next month. I’m going to be six.”
“Do you know,” she said, “I believe I heard a rumor somewhere that most five-year-old boys turn six on their next birthdays.”
He giggled. “Will you come?”
“I’ll have to see.”
She didn’t add that a lot could happen between now and next month. Given the tangled history between her and Brendan, she wasn’t entirely sure she would be welcome at his son’s birthday party in a month.
* * *
TWO EVENINGS LATER, Lucy juggled an umbrella in one hand, a bag from her favorite toy store in Seattle in the other and a box in both arms as she pressed Brendan’s doorbell with her elbow.
She had always loved his house. It was comfortable and homey, built of a warm, rust-colored brick in the Craftsman style, with a wide front porch and two dormer windows. Situated on a higher plot in town, it had lovely views down the hill into downtown Hope’s Crossing.
Jess’s favorite rocking chair had a few old cobwebs underneath it, as if nobody used it much anymore.
She didn’t have time to feel more than a sharp, familiar pang of loss over that before the door jerked open. Brendan stood on the other side, a cordless house phone cradled in the crook of his shoulder and neck and his fingers texting on a cell phone in his hand.
He appeared astonished to see her for all of two seconds before his features shifted into an expression of sheer gratitude. He grabbed the box out of her arms with one hand and practically yanked her inside with the other.
“I understand,” he said into the phone in a clear tone of dismissal. “If you can’t do it, you can’t do it. Thanks, anyway. Talk to you soon.”
He hung up and set the cordless receiver down on a cluttered table in the entryway at the same time he shoved the cell phone back in his pocket. “Lucy Drake, you are an answer to prayer.”
She couldn’t recall anyone ever saying that to her, especially not Brendan Caine. “I am?”
“Yes! Please tell me you’re free for the next couple of hours.”
She mentally perused her evening schedule and came up empty. As usual. “I should be free,” she said, rather warily.
“Any chance you might be willing to stay with the kids for me? I’m supposed to be off tonight but I just got a call that three of our four full-time paramedics and four more of the volunteers are out with stomach trouble, probably food poisoning from some bad Chinese food they had for lunch, and we’ve had a string of accidents from the rain. I’m got to go in and cover until the overnight shift comes in. I know it’s a lot to ask but the kids have already had their baths and are almost ready for bed.”
She was stunned at the unexpected request but thrilled at the same time that he would even consider turning to her, a woman he so obviously disliked. “Of course. I’m happy to stay with them.”
“None of my usual backup caregivers are available,” he said, looking frazzled. “If you hadn’t showed up, I was going to have to drag them in with me, pajamas and all, as a last resort. Thank you. I owe you.”
“Not at all. I’ll be delighted to spend a little time with them. You know I will.”
“I’ll try to get off as early as I can. Midnight would be the latest.”
“No problem. I can get them to sleep.”
“Thanks. I’ve got to run. Um, make yourself comfortable. Whatever you need. My cell number is on the fridge if you need me.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Thanks. Seriously. I owe you.”
“You don’t. I owe you for giving me the chance to spend time with them.”
“Give me a second. I just have to change. The kids should be changing into pajamas. I imagine they’ll be in any moment.”
She waved him off and stood for a moment in the entryway of his house, left a little off-kilter by the unexpected turn of events.
This was good, though. She couldn’t imagine anything she would rather do than spend the evening with her two favorite children.
She set the hefty box on the bottom step and put the toy store bag on top of it. She was shrugging out of her raincoat when Carter and Faith came barreling down the hall, their hair wet. Carter was wearing LEGO Star Wars pajamas, and Faith had on a nightgown sporting Strawberry Shortcake. They looked startled to see her but rushed over with ready hugs.
“What are you doing here?” Faith asked.
“Well, my plan was to drop a few things off for you, but your dad just asked me to stay with you for a couple of hours while he runs into work.”
“Yay!” Faith exclaimed just as Brendan emerged from down the hall wearing navy cargo pants and a white polo shirt with the logo of the Hope’s Crossing Fire Department on the chest. He looked big and tough and dangerous.
Oh, and delicious. She couldn’t deny that.
“Good news, kids,” he said, grabbing a set of keys off a table in the entryway. “You get to stay in your own beds instead of sleeping at Grandpa’s place or at Aunt Charlotte’s. Your aunt Lucy has kindly agreed to keep an eye on you this evening until I can make it back.”
Carter raced to her and gave her a complicated high-five. Somehow she managed to keep up. “Can we stay up until ten?” he asked.
“Eight-thirty,” she countered. She figured that was appropriate when Brendan didn’t protest the negotiation.
“Yay! That’s half an hour later than usual,” Carter exclaimed.
“Just this once,” Brendan said. He scooped up his son and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Be good for Aunt Lucy.”
“I’m always good,” Carter insisted.
Faith rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Brendan set the boy down and folded his daughter into a hug. “You, too. No staying up all night reading, got it?”
“Got it.” She hugged him hard. “Good night, Dad. Be careful, okay?”
His mouth tightened a little, but Lucy watched him twist it into a smile that looked forced. “Will do, kiddo.”
He straightened. “Thank you again,” he said to Lucy. “Seriously. You saved the day.”
“Right time, right place. I’m glad I could help.”
He studied her for just a moment, and she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. She was no doubt bedraggled from the rainy walk to his house. She should have just driven, but it had seemed ridiculous when he lived less than a block away.
It didn’t matter what she looked like, she reminded herself. Brendan didn’t care. He had made that quite plain when he had kissed her senseless one moment and then fallen in love with her best friend the next.
“All right, my darlings,” she said after he left. “Who wants to see what I’ve brought you?”
“Me! Me!” Carter exclaimed.
Faith chewed on her bottom lip. “Did Dad say it was okay?”
Brendan had known she had gifts for the kids. He had seen her carrying them in, and he hadn’t not said it was okay.
She was going to take that as approval—though it annoyed her that he had apparently expressed enough displeasure about her gift-giving habits that perceptive little Faith picked up on it.
“It’s fine,” she answered.
“Okay,” Faith decided. “Then I would like to see, too.”
She tried not to overspend on the children, though she had to check herself at times. She had been paid an exorbitant salary at NexGen, far exceeding her needs and her investments, and had few people to spend it on—a number that had dwindled in the past two years with Jessie’s and Annabelle’s deaths.
Her father, her stepmother, her half sister, Crystal, and the children. That was about the size of it.
She wanted to spoil Carter and Faith with trinkets and treasures but knew the things she gave them paled in comparison to actually making the effort to have contact with them through email, Skype and phone calls.
To that end, these gifts were small, but Carter adored the clever magnetic shapes that could be put together to form all kinds of structures, and Faith gave an adorable gasp of delight at the little elastic band bracelet loom and the supply of bands that came along with it.
“Oh! I’ve been wanting one of these to make bracelets for my friends,” she exclaimed.
“Great. We can figure it out together. The woman at the toy store showed me how, and it looks simple enough.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Faith said.
“I am, too, sweetheart,” she answered—and to her surprise, it wasn’t completely a lie, at least not when she was with the children.
She pulled out the heavy box she had carried down from Iris House. “The real treasure is in here, though.”
“What is it?” Carter asked. “Can I open it?”
“You both can.”
The children knelt on either side of the box and worked together to pull back the cardboard flaps.
“Books.”
They both said the word at the same time, Carter with disgust and Faith in a reverent tone.
“Yes. Books. I found them up at Iris House. These were all your mom and my favorites when we were children—The BFG, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, Jack London, The Hobbit.”
“Hey, I saw that movie,” Carter exclaimed.
“You need to read the book now.”
“Only I can’t read chapter books,” he answered in a duh sort of tone.
“It’s only a matter of time, kid. You’ll be reading chapter books before you know it and then you’ll want to read some of these books, I promise.”
She pulled a boxed collection from the bottom of the box and held it out to Faith, who looked dazed with delight at the literary bounty. “And look at this. My very favorite. Anne of Green Gables. One summer when I came to stay with Annabelle for a few weeks, your mom and I made a pact to read the whole series by the time school started again. I think I was thirteen.”
She actually knew she had been thirteen. It was the summer her father had left them, she remembered, when she had been lost and frightened, emotionally traumatized by a lifetime of being caught in the crosshairs on the battlefield of a horrible marriage.
When her mother—seeking attention, as always—made a halfhearted suicide attempt and was subsequently committed to the psychiatric treatment unit at the local hospital, Robert Drake had once more shrugged off responsibility for her.
How could he possibly be expected to take in a frightened girl? He had just moved in with his twenty-one-year-old girlfriend, and Pam wasn’t at all prepared to handle that kind of responsibility. Besides, they just didn’t have room. She would have so much more fun staying at Annabelle’s, where her favorite cousin, Jessica, was living with her recently widowed mother.
For Robert, it had been the perfect solution. For Lucy, it was just another betrayal, made bearable only by Annabelle and Jessica and the magical escape she found that summer in books.
When her mother was released, she moved back to Denver with Betsy but she’d never forgotten those treasured hours reading on the shaded porch swing on hot July afternoons or under the big maple tree out back.
“You’ve read them, right?” she asked Faith now.
The girl shook her head. “Not yet. I’ve been wanting to but I never started.”
She was not quite eight, much younger than Lucy had been when she’d read them. Maybe she wouldn’t enjoy them as much.
Despite her worry, Faith looked delighted and picked the first book out of the collection and opened it up right there in the living room.
“What about me?” Carter asked, not to be outdone. “Which one should I read?”
She looked through the collection and pulled out Charlotte’s Web.
“Have you read this? It’s one of my favorites.”
“Is that the one about the spider and the pig?” he asked.
“The very one.”
“Daddy checked it out of the library for us once but we were reading something else and never had time for that one before we had to return it.”
“Now you have your own copy and don’t have to take it back to the library. Why don’t we start it tonight?”
“Okay!”
“Faith, do you want to stay out here and read your book or come into Carter’s room and listen to Charlotte’s Web?”
“I’ll come with you.”
Carter led the way back to his room, still decorated the way Jessie had left it, with a Western Americana theme: red, white and blue, with horseshoes holding up some shelves and a trail of stars stenciled around the ceiling.
It was a cute room for a boy, perfect for an active kid like Carter.
The sharpness of loss clutched at her chest again. Jessie had loved her family, being a mother, making a comfortable home for them. Of all the gross inequities in the world, Lucy considered it so unfair that this loving young mother with her life ahead of her would be taken from her family by a health condition nobody could have anticipated.
The room had two twin beds, maybe in anticipation for the day when Carter would have shared this room with his brother, who had been too gestationally immature to survive outside the womb after Jess went into cardiac arrest so suddenly.
Carter jumped onto one of the beds, and Lucy forced herself to push the sadness away.
“Daddy usually reads to me from the other one. You can do that, too.”
She eased down onto the bed, and Faith curled up at her feet, pulling a throw over herself and listening raptly while Lucy began reading the story about a runt piglet and the spider who was a very brave friend—and a good writer, too.
By the time she finished the first chapter, Carter’s eyelids were drooping. Judging by his energy level every time she saw him, she completely understood why. An object in constant motion eventually had to run out of steam. She didn’t know if that was an actual physics principle, but it definitely applied to five-year-old boys.
He closed his eyes at the same moment she marked her page and closed the book. She slid off the bed and pulled his blanket up over his shoulders, awash with tenderness for this funny little man.
“You got through a whole chapter. That’s great. My dad usually falls asleep after about two pages while he’s reading to Carter,” Faith confided in a whisper.
Like his son, Brendan put in a long, busy day, as well.
“I guess it’s lucky for both of us I made it this far. Shall we go into your room and read about Anne coming to know Matthew and Marilla?”
“Yes!”
Together, they walked down the hall to Faith’s room, all pink and lavender and yellow, sweet as Faith herself.
“Oh. Look at that! That’s the chair you told me about on the phone a few months ago. I’d forgotten about it, but it’s just as lovely as you said.”
It was a slim Queen Anne recliner with curvy lines and a pretty material that seemed to bring together all the colors of the room.
“Dad said somebody who liked to read as much as I do needed a comfortable reading nook. He bought me the light and everything. And it wasn’t even my birthday. It was a just-because present. Those are the best.”
“I agree.” She smiled. “Do you want the chair or the bed for reading?”
“I’ll take the bed.” Faith settled in, hands clasped on her chest expectantly.
Lucy settled into the recliner—which was, indeed, comfortable—and proceeded to read a chapter from the book about an orphaned girl trying to make her way in her new home.
“I think that’s enough,” she finally said, though she would have read all night if she could, she was enjoying it so much.
“Anne is so funny,” Faith declared.
“She is,” Lucy responded.
The girl was quiet as Lucy rose from the recliner, laid the book on her bedside table and tucked in her quilt a little more snugly around her.
“I wonder how her mom died,” Faith finally asked, her voice low.
This poor little child, who had lost her own mother too young. Lucy wanted to cry suddenly that Jess would never have the chance to know the funny, sweet, courageous girl her daughter was becoming.
“If I recall from reading the series all those years ago, she was only a baby when both of her parents died of an illness.”
“That would have been easier,” Faith said, her voice solemn. “She probably didn’t know them enough to miss them.”
“Oh, honey.”
She reached down to the bed and hugged Faith, wondering if the girl was open with her father about her grief or if she tried to protect him from it, as appeared to be her nature.
“It’s normal to miss your mom,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “You know that, right? Some part of you will always have a little hole. My mom died almost twenty years ago, and I still miss her.”
Despite her emotional and psychological issues, Betsy had still been her mother. Lucy knew she probably missed what she wished she had in a mother more than the actual person, but the loss was no less acute.
“More than anything,” she went on to Faith, “I wish that I could patch that hole for you and take away your sadness. But that would also mean taking away all your wonderful memories of your mom, and I would never, ever want to do that. You’re sad because you miss her. I miss her, too. Your dad and Carter do, too.”
“I know,” Faith said, her voice small. “I miss her so much sometimes. Carter doesn’t remember her much. He was only three. I do, though.”
“He’ll remember her most through the memories you and your dad share with him about her.”
“Sometimes I’m mad at her, too,” Faith said in a rush, as if the confession had been churning inside her for some time, just waiting for a chance to slip out.
Lucy was almost positive Faith hadn’t shared this with her father. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the girl’s hand into hers. “That’s normal, too, honey.”
“Why did she even need another baby? She had me and Carter. She would still be here if she hadn’t decided to have another baby.”
Just how much did Faith know about the circumstances around Jessie’s death? Lucy chose her words carefully. “Your mom used to tell me when we were girls that she wanted a half-dozen kids, just like the Brady Bunch. Three boys and three girls. She loved your dad’s big family and wanted one, too. It’s not that you weren’t enough for her, honey. She just had so much love in her heart and knew another baby would make that love grow even more.”
“It didn’t, though.”
Lucy sighed. “She didn’t know she had a problem with her heart. None of the doctors even knew. She spent all her life with it and had you and Carter and it never gave her any trouble. She had no reason to think having the new baby would be any different from having you or your brother.”
She hugged Faith, feeling the slenderness of her bones beneath her nightgown. “You know she would never have chosen to leave you, right?”
Faith sniffled a little but didn’t cry. “I guess.”
“You were her sunshine. Always. I know it hurts not having her here, but the best thing you can do is think about all the good you still have. Your dad, Carter, your grandpa Caine and all your aunts and uncles and cousins.”
“You.”
The tears she had been fighting ever since Faith first asked her about Anne Shirley’s mother welled up, and she had to swallow hard against the emotion in her throat. “Me. Yes. Always.”
“I know. I know I have all that. Sometimes I just get a little sad.”
“Nothing wrong with that. The sad times in our lives help us appreciate those moments of beauty and joy.” She rose. “You need to try to sleep now. You’ve got school tomorrow, and your dad won’t be very happy with me if he finds us still up gabbing when he gets back. If you want, I can read here in your comfortable chair while you fall asleep.”
“No. I’ll be okay.” She smiled sleepily. “I’m really glad you’re here, Aunt Lucy.”
She kissed the top of the girl’s wispy blond hair. “I am, too, darling.”
